Getting Lost In The Sauce: Practicing Through Song

How many times have you thought or said this: I feel like I have a solid grasp on the exercises, but I don’t see how they translate to singing a song. OR, my voice feels great doing the exercises, but it falls apart when I move to the song. 

As singers, we can get lost in the sauce when it comes to our technical work and vocal exercises. I am speaking from LOTS and LOTS of personal experience. Before I dive into more of what I mean, I want to say this: technical work and specificity are important. Very important. Many singers tend to focus only on vocal exercises, or more time is spent on vocal exercises rather than songwork. But here’s the deal: if the point is to sing songs, then you need to…sing songs. 

Vocal exercises can give us a strong foundation, build skills, and improve the efficiency of our voice. We use them to specifically guide our voice into range expansion, registration building, and flexibility. The list goes on and on. What they can’t do, though, is teach us how to sing songs well. 

If you feel like this is you, I want you to start incorporating two things into your daily life and practice. 

1. Sing full songs, start to finish. A lot. Don’t stop yourself to correct a mistake. Don’t stop yourself because it isn’t “perfect.” You can set a specific time aside to do this, or you can sing songs while you’re doing chores, sing songs while you’re in the shower, or sing songs while you’re driving. By doing this, you are building stamina, you are subconsciously learning song structure and musicianship, and you are emotionally and musically learning to express a full song. We get in the habit of stopping and starting, so by not doing this, you are building resilience.
   
2. Sing songs, BUT actually work on specific nuances of the song. Give yourself a goal and work it. Things to work on: emotion, musicianship, stability, stamina, tension release, efficiently hitting notes that are hard for you, articulation, style, and memorization. An example might be: “I am going to make sure the vocal fry and breathiness in this phrase are consistent.” You now have something specific to check on, and you can practice it until it’s achieved, OR better than before, OR it may be that you are still struggling with it but now you have something specific to work on in your voice lesson. Sometimes we don’t know where to start, or are unsure what needs work. Here’s what I ask my students to shake them loose a bit: “If you knew you had to perform this song in one week, what would you work on?” The sudden “pressure” of even a fake performance locks us in. It gives us focus. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the thing that pops into our head first is the most important or the only thing, but it gives us a start. And for many, that’s the hardest part. Starting. 

• Bonus: Sing in front of someone. Not a performance, just a quick, spontaneous run-through. Comments from the spectator can include, “WHOA, THAT WAS AWESOME!”, or ”THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LETTING ME HEAR YOU SING!”, or, no comment. The point is to practice singing a full song in front of someone so you can see what’s going well and what still needs some work. One of my students has invited a friend to hop onto FaceTime in our lesson to hear them sing a song. The added pressure of this is always informative for both of us. We’ll do a run-through, and everything will be fantastic, and then we have a friend pop on for 3 minutes, and then all of a sudden…not so fantastic. Now we know where to put more work. 

All of this may or may not seem obvious to you, and yet, it’s very common! If you want to learn to drive a car, it’s helpful to observe someone driving the car, it’s helpful to learn the rules…but to drive…you need to get behind the wheel. So, if you relate to any of the above, I encourage you to get behind the proverbial wheel and take your voice out for a spin!